


the in-between is so enticing

by Ariesgirl666



Category: American Horror Story: Apocalypse
Genre: Alternate Universe -Faerie, Alternate Universe -Fairy Tale, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-16 16:28:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16498886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariesgirl666/pseuds/Ariesgirl666
Summary: a sequel to "you keep my heart under the cover of night"Or, Coco finally meets the fairy that's been protecting her since childhood and she's incredibly beautiful.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> listen to Digital Daggers while reading

When she’s six years old, the girl in the woods saves her life.

Coco’s hiding from her governess in the woods -her third governess in as many months -when something grips her ankle and she’s swung up into a bear trap.

 

Coco screams, and a beautiful, golden eyed woman in a white dress steps out from the shadows. She smiles, and Coco stops crying immediately, transfixed by her soft, delicate features.

The woman runs a hand along the wire and it gently eases Coco down.

When Coco looks up from her skinned knees, the woman is gone.

 

Coco sees the girl again exactly seven years later.

This time, she went looking for her.

“You,” the not-quite-human girl says with a smile in her tone.

Coco waves, all awkward puberty and tangled limbs. “I’m Coco,” she says, like a moron.

The girl inclines her head gracefully. She wears a crown of briars in her hair. “Mallory,” she entrusts her name to Coco as if it’s a rare treasure. (it is)

 

“Mallory?” Coco shouts. She’s seventeen and her boyfriend just broke up with her _at prom_.

Coco kicks off her pumps, stumbles over the foamy hem of her awful sea-green dress. She keeps walking until she finds about a square foot of black silk spread over the grass and lit by pink candles. There’s an apple, shiny and tempting with _eat me_ written in cursive. Coco picks it up. The note is signed with an elegant _M._

Coco smiles and takes a bite. Something inside her screams DANGER, but it’s too late. She collapses in a heap of defenseless mortal girl.

 

Coco wakes up with her head in Mallory’s lap and three beautiful young women fussing over them. One of them Coco recognizes -the girl’s name is Zoe Benson, she was seventeen when Coco was nine and yet she’s seventeen still, and she’d gone missing after a young boy had seen her kissing a pointy-eared blonde.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Mallory reassures in her uniquely lyrical tone. Coco’s eyes close unwillingly. She hears Mallory say softly to one of her attendants, “How do you know it was him?”

 

Coco sees Mallory again on her twenty-first birthday.

Mallory gives her a flower crown and a kiss.

Coco is old enough to know that the Fey always want something in return, but Mallory isn’t like that. She’s different.

 

They spend almost every day together. Sometimes Mallory braids Coco’s hair and tells her stories. She tells her of Madison, a willow fey who fell in love with a human girl called Zoe and granted her immortality. She tells her of the terrifying Marie Laveau of the 1600s, a witch who sold her soul for the same eternal life, and of Queenie, a young slave girl who was granted immortality by Nan, the daughter of Papa Legba.

 

Coco’s stories aren’t as interesting, but Mallory acts like they are.

Coco appreciates that.

 

Coco always comes back to the forest. When she finally kisses Mallory, her mouth tastes like sugar and raspberries.

 

Mallory tells Coco, six months later, about a dragon that’s trying to take her crown.

“Why?” Coco asks stupidly. How could anyone want to hurt Mallory?

Maybe she said that aloud, because Mal blushes and kisses her cheek. “Not everyone likes the way I rule,” she explains. “With a Council instead of a Court. They also don’t like the ban Cordelia and her hedge-witch made against hurting humans.”

“Or _perhaps_ , Mallory,” comes a velvet voice with an aristocratic lilt. “We just think that you’re _weak_.”

Mallory scrambles to her feet. Coco stays seated. “Who are you?” she asks.

“Aren’t you something,” the man says, disdainful.

 

“Go away, Michael,” Mallory says. She watches him like he could pounce at any minute, and she moves to stand protectively in front of Coco.

“Are you her pet, little one?”

Coco stands, five feet of fury in Lululemon yoga pants. “How dare -”

 

“I’m here to negotiate the terms of your surrender, Mallory,” his lips curl around the escaping L’s.

“What surrender would that be?” Mallory challenges.

“Do you wish for my monsters to attack the Seelie Court at sundown? They crave your blood.” He smiles thinly. “As do I.”  
Coco vividly remembers a MISSING poster from two weeks ago. She stares at the dried blood on Michael’s cuffs and wants to hurl.

Mallory narrows her eyes, a tawny little wolf. “You need to accept that you’ve already lost,” she says. “I earned the Seelie throne by myself.”

“I am a god,” Michael says, and the conviction in his eyes is terrifying. “Your law means nothing to me.”

Mallory’s hand squeezes Coco’s and she whispers -“Run.”


	2. Chapter 2

Coco runs. Runs because she’s never had Mallory sound so scared, runs away because she’s scared of the dragon with golden scales and gasoline eyes, runs because she knows that she’s only a burden to Mallory.

She runs and she cries and she collapses in the shadow of an old tree and there’s a peculiar silence.

 

Mallory must have lost the fight, as the attacks on Coco’s city grew worse.

But one day, a curly-haired hedgewitch comes carrying a glass coffin, supported by the girls from Mallory’s stories and inside is Mallory, who Coco’s told was kept a sleeping ornament in the Shadow King’s throne room.

 

I could tell you how Coco woke Mallory, how they took back the kingdom, how the pretty hedgewitch finally married her fair lover fey. But those stories have been told.

 

So I leave you with this -Queenie and Nan leading the Wild Hunt as Audrey and Shelby bicker begins them. Zoe and Madison sharing secrets under an old hickory tree. Mallory and Coco, crowned in laurels, lying spread on the grass for the world to see, fingers safely interlocked.

 

_Fin_


End file.
